Oppressive

How to spell oppressive

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce oppressive

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does oppressive mean?

1. adjectiveExercising power in a harsh, cruel, or unjustly burdensome way.
2. adjectiveSo intense or heavy as to cause discomfort, especially heat or a tense mood.

Oppressive in a sentence

• The new tax rules felt oppressive to small business owners.

• The oppressive heat made it impossible to sleep without the fan.

• Workers fled the country to escape its oppressive regime.

• An oppressive silence settled over the room after the announcement.

Where does oppressive come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb opprimere, meaning 'to press down on' or 'to crush', formed from the prefix ob-, here meaning 'against' or 'down upon', combined with premere, 'to press'. The past participle oppressus gave rise to a family of words about weighing heavily on someone, both physically and figuratively. English took the adjective through Old French in the late medieval period, and by the 1400s it described the harsh, crushing exercise of power by rulers and masters. The same premere root presses on inside everyday relatives such as 'press', 'pressure', 'compress', and 'depress', which is a useful reminder that the spelling keeps the double s of 'press'. The doubled p, meanwhile, comes from ob- assimilating to op- before the p of premere, so the word literally pictures a force pressing down hard from above.

How the word is built

• op- (from Latin ob-: against, down upon)
• press (to press, from premere)
• -ive (adjective suffix)